Transcript
Dr. West, a recent article in a religious publication stated that for the first time in 150 years there were no Protestant missionaries at work in mainland China. Does this mean that there are no longer Protestant Christians in China who have trained leadership? Well, Mr. Andrews, I know from my experience as a Protestant missionary in China for three years that we were always in the minority as leaders of the church in China, if we could be called
leaders at all. In fact, most of the leaders of the churches are still at work there, and most of them are still at their posts. Do we have sources of contact with them? That is, do we have any idea of the nature of church life in China today? Well, now those are two questions. We have some contact. There is the regular official publication of the churches in China, which is called Heavenly Wind, and we get copies
of that regularly. We hear from certain church leaders, but this does not mean that we know what is going on in the congregations, because what the official church paper is allowed to print is, of course, what the government permits, and often there is very little church news in it, and we get practically no informal news out of China. Occasionally, a refugee comes out and tells how it is in his congregation, Canton or Hang But in general,
we have only these official and government-censored bits of information which come through official channels. Well, then are you able to notice any differences or changes through names that the government publication mentions, or the emphases of this magazine that would be intelligible to a trained observer like yourself? Yes, indeed. In fact, that reading between the lines is one of our main sources of information. One of the encouraging things is that leaders who have dropped out of
the news, whose names have not appeared for three or four years, come back in again, which shows that they are still alive and still at work when we were wondering and sometimes worried about them. Then back to the other question of that unfortunate two-part one I fed to you about the nature of church life in China today. Can we get some idea of what it's like to be a Chinese Christian under the current government? We
can, again, read between the lines and often infer from what is not said or from what is attacked in the official publication and sometimes in the secular press what church life must be like. We know that it's under tremendous pressures, not only because it is looked down upon to be a Christian in China, but also because people are so terribly busy, kept so by the government, and because people are moved around so much that they have
often lost contact with their earlier congregations and have not found contact with new ones. But in spite of this, we know that church services continue. We know that active Bible study continues. We know that there are vital Christian groups at work in most of the centers that we were in before China was closed to us so that we have confidence that there is a vital Christian life and that there would be a great deal more of
it and will be a great deal more of it when conditions become easier and people are permitted to spend their time as they want to spend it rather than as they must according to government plan. Well may we compare that then within the realm of your own experiences to the condition of Christian churches in East Germany where you went after China was closed to you personally? Yes, the contrast couldn't possibly be greater. In China, the Protestant
Christians formed one-fifth of one percent of the population in 1949 and probably are fewer today. In East Germany, five-sixths of the population belongs to one church, the evangelical church in Germany. In China, the gospel was planted in the middle of the last century. In East Germany, the church has existed for over a thousand years. In other words, Eastern Germany is the first country conquered by the communists which was beforehand formed and molded by its
experience with the Protestant evangelical church so that you have a different basis there. In East Germany, therefore, the church can accomplish a great deal more by the sheer weight of its allegiance and the number of the faithful than it can accomplish in China. Is it still then holding somewhat of a position of strength, if that's a proper word, or of at least respect and influence in the communities of East Germany? Respect and influence is perhaps a
better word than strength because, well, the Church of Jesus Christ, by the nature of the case, has no worldly strength. You will remember that our church was founded when Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate even though he was the son of God. But the church in Eastern Germany has a tremendous influence by virtue of its ability to remind the communist leaders what the will of God for human life is, and this it is constantly and continually
doing. I gather that that advice is not always welcomed by communist officials. No, it's not. And in fact, the communist tactic in attacking the church is to try to identify the church with Western militarism, Western imperialism, try to make it seem as if the Christian message is the same thing as the message of the Western nations. And the church spends a large part of its time making clear to the communists that it speaks out of the
word of God and out of the Christian conscience and not just as a part of the propaganda of the West. Well there are other reasons then for the hostility of communism towards Christianity besides the, what you might call the doctrinaire objections that it's unscientific and superstitious to be a religious person. Well the main objection which the communists have to Christianity is what they have to all religion, namely they regard it as an illusion which cuts the
nerve of revolutionary effort towards social change. And it is one of the main tasks therefore of Christians in all communist lands to make clear to communist governments that they are themselves in their own way revolutionary, that they are also on the side of social change which will improve the conditions of human but that their concept of revolution and that their concept of social change is not the same as that of the communists. You find then that
these churches do show some evidences of health as Christian communities working for normal Christian purposes within a communist nation. I would go even further and say that the experience of the church in East Germany shows that the church can be renewed, can become more vital and more healthy when it is under attack than it normally is when it is accepted and integrated into the general religious world view of a country where it is established. This opposition
brings out a real faithfulness and a real obedience. Do the churches then in such a situation have things to teach us in the West, especially in the United States that they have learned from their experiences? I think first of all they can teach us that the Word of God is always a challenge to the comfortable ways we live and to our own desires. Here in America we have a tendency to imagine that God blesses everything that
we choose to do, our prosperity, our plans, but it isn't always so. God seeks to change a man's life, to transform it. Now in East Germany nobody would be a Christian because he thought that it was the comfortable and accepted thing to do. He becomes a Christian because he knows that his life is in the hands of God and that whether he lives or dies this is the purpose of his living. For the East German it's
often a costly thing then to be an active member of a church or to be identified as a Christian. Quite practically it may lead to his being expelled from school, it may lead to his losing his job, it may possibly lead to his being arrested on a false charge and spending years in prison. There is not any immediate evidence that Christians have been put to death because of their Christian conviction in recent years, but to be
deprived of one's freedom is bad enough and to be deprived of the means of livelihood is difficult enough. And then they're subjected continually to all kinds of psychological pressure, pressure of interrogation, pressure of ostracism, trying to make them change their minds and conform to the communist way of doing things. Despite this however there still remains a strong core of Christian peoples in the Eastern communist nations of Europe and we have some contact with them more so
than with the Chinese Christians we mentioned earlier. We have a tremendous amount of contact with Christians in East Germany, less now of course since the wall went up through the middle of Berlin, but still a great deal and also with those of other countries in Eastern Europe. I would say that the Christians in Eastern Europe help all of the people who live there to gain just a little bit more freedom and just a little bit more
confidence in themselves over against the communist power. Is the World Council of Churches an effective agent in helping us to stay in touch with such churches and individuals? Yes, because it is one of the few channels by which we can visit these people on a church to church basis and give them a sense that they belong to us. In fact those churches in the East live spiritually from the sense of belonging to a world fellowship of
churches, a world ecumenical community.